Rugby league club Cadishead Rhinos are encouraging more children in Salford to get involved in their multi-sport sessions.
The sessions are designed for disabled and neurodivergent children, and have been taking place since October every Monday evening and are free to attend, participant-led and open to all levels of ability, with no prior rugby league experience required.
The programme is part of TRYZ, an initiative established by the RFL and Access Sport in 2022, which focuses on delivering pan-disability rugby league across the UK, ensuring that all young people have the opportunity to play the sport in a fun and inclusive environment.
While the sessions have paused for the winter break, Cadishead Rhinos have put a callout for greater participation ahead of them resuming in January for two weeks.
Martin Johnson, who leads the sessions and is a member of the junior committee at the club, said: “We’ve had good feedback from the parents, who love it.
“We’ve had quite a lot of difficulty changing minds as to what rugby is. Because we said it was a rugby first sort of thing, people think cauliflower ears and broken noses, when it’s absolutely not. It’s multi-sport and helps these children with their physical coordination.
“It’s steady numbers at the minute, about three or four children. A lot of what we’ve been doing at the moment is just fact-finding and speaking to those who turn up about how we can make it better.
“We’re planning our next sessions for January, February and beyond.
“So far, we have struggled to get buy-in from schools. The feedback we’ve had from other clubs who’ve tried this, such as Swinton Lions, who got around 100 kids, is to keep it going until around April, and you’ll suddenly see numbers shoot up.”
Swinton Lions held their own inclusive sessions with TRYZ back in March, helping children with touch and tag rugby principles and engaging them in a number of sports.
The Rhinos, unlike Swinton Lions, are an amateur club, having been founded in 1993, priding themselves on being community-driven with an expanding number of teams from children aged three all the way to adult men’s teams.
Martin said: “We’ve had one participant who said it’s the social interaction they’ve gained from it. They’ve made friends. A lot of schools for high dependency children are not always local and I think this has allowed this particular child to make friends in the local area.
“We’ve also had feedback from parents, who’ve been allowed to mix and share their experience of having children with high dependency needs. They almost feel like they’re not alone, there’s somewhere they can meet and talk whilst their children have fun.
“One of our internal coaches has now been fully trained up and is looking to get into schools to take this programme and deliver it in schools themselves.
“Whilst we’ve not had massive numbers down the club, whilst we’re measuring our social impact on it I think we’ve done pretty well.
“We’ve started to introduce it more, created a bit of a buzz around it and in the end we’re hoping that even if children don’t come to us, kids are getting more involved in sport in schools and so on.”
Sessions will return in January and take place every monday between 5-6pm at Cadishead Rhinos ARLFC, Lord Street, M44 5EH. Further details on how to sign up found here.
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